India liberated Bangladesh in 1971. The Bangladesh freedom fighters were no match militarily for the Pakistan army and there was enough residual support for the idea of Pakistan in its eastern wing to preclude a clear-cut separation of the two wings. India’s intervention was altruistic only in small part. It was primarily based on realpolitik.

The Lok Sabha on Wednesday passed the Finance Bill, 2018, with 21 amendments, some of which had to do with the controversial long-term capital gains tax on equity announced in the Budget speech by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and tax exemptions for start-ups.

The Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS) 2017, which uses 150 parameters to judge 23 cities, has placed Pune at the top and Bengaluru at the bottom of the rankings. While Pune scored 5.1 out of a maximum score of 10, Bengaluru got just 3. But Indian cities lagged behind global cities like New York and London, which scored 8.8.

Amid criticism from several quarters, including the government, for failing to prevent banking frauds in the light of the recent Punjab National Bank scam, Reserve Bank of India Governor Urjit Patel said on Wednesday that no banking regulator can catch or prevent all banking frauds. “There has been a tendency in the pronouncements post revelation of the fraud that RBI supervision team should have caught it,” Dr. Patel said in a speech at the Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar.

Social media posed a serious challenge to law enforcement agencies and the areas of concern included terrorism, financial frauds and victimisation of women and children, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said on Wednesday.

The “surgical operation” earlier this month killing the mastermind of the Sunjuwan Army camp attack (Jammu) was lauded as a major victory for Indian security forces, but for some observers, it is surprising that such a seemingly provocative episode closed with such a measured response.

Stephen W. Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist and best-selling author who roamed the cosmos from a wheelchair, pondering the nature of gravity and the origin of the universe and becoming an emblem of human determination and curiosity, has died at his home in Cambridge, England. He was 76.

Few scientists manage to break down the walls of the so-called ivory tower of academia and touch and inspire people who may not otherwise be interested in science. Stephen Hawking was one of these few. Judging by the odds he faced as a young graduate student of physics at Cambridge University, nothing could have been a more remote possibility.